The New Megacities

"[P]eople are moving to cities in droves. In 1950, two-thirds of the world's population lived in the countryside. New York was then the only settlement with more than 10m people. Today there are 20 such megacities, and more are on the way.Most of these megacities are in developing countries that are struggling to cope with both the speed and the scale of human migration...By 2030 nearly two-thirds of the world's population will be urban...If there is one thing that everybody agrees on, it is that urbanisation is unstoppable. Migrants attempting to escape poverty, and refugees escaping conflict, are piling into cities in what the executive director of UN-HABITAT, Anna Tibaijuka, describes as 'premature urbanisation'."